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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27500644">Fall of Spring, End of Time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Watch_Out_For_Bears/pseuds/Watch_Out_For_Bears'>Watch_Out_For_Bears</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hadestown - Mitchell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, This Is Sad, again: SAD, i don't know why i did this but rest assured i regret it</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:14:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,875</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27500644</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Watch_Out_For_Bears/pseuds/Watch_Out_For_Bears</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Eurydice witnesses the end of the world.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fall of Spring, End of Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This musical has taken over my life. So I ruined it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TW: I'm not sure whether or not to classify this as graphic but there's blood and a fatal injury so...</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eurydice can’t remember how long it’s been. When she first arrived in Hadestown, she was shocked that anyone could forget their own self. <em> It’s their fault</em>, she remembers thinking. <em> They’re just not trying hard enough</em>.</p>
<p>So she started out determined to hold on. But the days go by and by and by, always just similar enough that they blend together and just different enough to keep her and the shades in a permanent state of stress. (Her and the shades. She refuses to think of herself as one of them, though the more time she spends here, the more color bleeds from her eyes, until she looks as hollow and weary as they do).</p>
<p>Still, Eurydice is luckier than most in that she has some<em>one </em> to remember, someone who exists beyond this realm of coal smoke and electric fences. The memory of Orpheus - Orpheus with the light on his face and a guitar in his hand - helps her keep her identity straight when it starts to feel like she is as much a machine as the train that brings newcomers to the station. Swing her pickax - sunlight - you are nothing but a worker - music - there is no one here who cares about you and no reward at the end of infinity - <em> Orpheus! </em>-</p>
<p>It is Hades’ fault, she decides. Orpheus may have looked back too soon, but Hades set them up to fail. Hades lured her here in the first place with his false promises of security and happiness. Hades ruins everything, either by stealing Persephone’s warmth from the above or by dominating the world below with a cruel and uncaring forward momentum. Progress, always. Work, always. Eurydice can’t remember the true color of the sky...the true taste of the air...the true pureness of water…</p>
<p>When she wakes up, she gets up. There is no lingering here in Hadestown, not for her, not for any of the shades. They file out of the shelters (built of plywood and scraps of metal; Hades is focused on his wall, which leaves nothing of substance for the workers) and take their place along the River Styx, in the mines, and in the factories. Eurydice goes to a warehouse that is filled with whirring machinery and toxic particles that burn her throat, her eyes, her skin.</p>
<p><em> Orpheus,</em> she thinks. <em> Orpheus</em>.</p>
<p>She works, and works, and works. The shade beside her has been rendered mute from so much time spent in the toxic air. Eurydice can only imagine that the same thing will happen to her eventually. She can already feel the burning in her throat begin to settle there. When she leaves for a short rest, it will linger longer than it used to.</p>
<p>She works, and works, and works. There is no rhythm; she cannot find a pattern in the motion of the machinery and must be on alert every second lest she find herself shredded or flattened or burned to ash. She has already seen this fate befall those who simply could not keep going, and Eurydice isn’t ready yet for that final oblivion.</p>
<p><em> Orpheus</em>.</p>
<p>She works, and works, and works. The overseers shout orders. Hades’ dogs bark, the sound carrying from the perimeter of Hadestown. At some point, when Eurydice’s arms and legs are shaking with weariness, she hears something.</p>
<p>It is a wonder that the sound carries over the cacophony of crashing and grinding metal parts, but it is there; a brief, collective intake of breath from the shades behind her, a gentle rise and fall.</p>
<p>Eurydice turns to look, though, of course, she knows what they have seen.</p>
<p>Persephone is here.</p>
<p>Eurydice has lost track of how many times the goddess has come and gone from Hadestown, but she knows that it’s not been long since Persephone’s train rolled in this fall. The goddess, since her arrival, has not left Hades’ mansion at the heart of the Underworld. (Eurydice’s lips twist in sardonic amusement. From the way Hades stared when Persephone arrived, and the way the air crackled between them as they moved closer and closer on the platform, and the tender yet barely-restrained kiss Hades bestowed upon his wife, who leaned against him with all her weight while the shades looked respectfully down, Eurydice can imagine that despite not leaving her house, Persephone has been been very busy indeed).</p>
<p>Now, though, it seems Persephone’s wandering spirit has led her out of the mansion and to the streets of Hadestown. She walks into the factory slowly, and this alone is enough to make her stand out, but beside this she is wearing the same green dress she arrived in. Usually she switches to black out of respect for the dead. Eurydice is glad that she hasn’t, as it seems are the rest of the workers: Persephone’s color is a welcome break in the oppressive blacks, grays, and whites of her husband’s town.</p>
<p>The shades seem to lean in towards the bringer of color, as entranced by her inhuman aura as they are by her mesmerizing brightness. Though up above Persephone walked among men as equals, Hadestown makes the differences between them starker. What was a faintly unnerving sense of otherness in the land of the living is now as glaring as the spotlights above head: Persephone gives off a feeling of power that is not obvious from the way she holds herself, but is apparent nonetheless. Beyond this, though, is warmth, and if Eurydice strains her ears she imagines she can hear the sound of sunlight, of clean air…</p>
<p>But Eurydice forces herself to turn back to her work, to let her hunched shoulders hide her face. She isn’t sure that Persephone has forgiven her for unwittingly accepting Hades’ attention, and Eurydice has no interest in facing the wrath of a goddess.</p>
<p><em> It is Hades’ fault</em>, Eurydice thinks. <em> Because Hades didn’t love Persephone the way Orpheus loves me, I got dragged into this. Because Hades is a madman who thinks electric lights and industrial steel are any replacement for the world above, I suffer</em>.</p>
<p>She keeps her head down, yes, she follows the rules. She can sense the Queen moving past her, deeper into the factory, where the bigger, more dangerous machines are. There are sighs of disappointment from the shades at Eurydice’s back, but Eurydice thinks they are ever-so-slightly more hopeful now, as well: Persephone has reminded them, however briefly, that light and joy still exist somewhere.</p>
<p>Because Eurydice is so determined not to be noticed, she does not see what happens next, and she is glad, because what she does see is already enough to imprint itself in her slippery memory until the end of time, like an unwanted tattoo inked into her mind.</p>
<p>First is the sound of a desperate shade crying, “Persephone!” </p>
<p>Then there is a scuffle and the sound of the goddess’s grunt. “Let go!” she snaps, sounding not afraid but annoyed.</p>
<p>Then there is a metallic hiss as one of a machine’s many moving parts begins to rotate towards a goddess who has stood in the same place for a few seconds to long. The hiss is followed almost immediately by a scream of shock and pain. Eurydice hears dull thud.</p>
<p>Silence. Dead silence. Even the machines still, as though they know what has happened. Perhaps they do.</p>
<p>Eurydice turns then; everyone does. What she sees causes her heart to drop into her empty stomach.</p>
<p>Persephone lies on the floor. The shade that was so desperate to hold summer in its arms moves back as though it thinks it can fade into the crowd.</p>
<p>There is no blood. Instead, from a cut throat and a ruined shoulder flows golden ichor, staining the green dress, coating sun-touched skin. It strikes Eurydice then, how very fragile Persephone is and always has been, despite her projection of haughty superiority or else reckless spontaneity. It strikes Eurydice too late.</p>
<p>Persephone is still trying to move. Goddesses, it seems, do not die easily. Her arms and legs shake feebly as though she thinks she can get up if she just tries hard enough. Panic fills her eyes as she struggles to breathe.</p>
<p>Sobs and wails fill the air, taking their place among the toxins. By now, every shade working in this building has realized what has happened. They form a sort of wall around Persephone, shoulder to shoulder, frozen in shock.</p>
<p>Frozen by cold, too, for a chill arrives at that instant, seeping into Eurydice’s bones.</p>
<p>Hades has arrived.</p>
<p>He slams the double doors open, and from the look on his face Eurydice knows he has already guessed what has happened. Hades, in this moment, terrifies her more than anything else ever has before. When he begins to move towards his wife, it is at first with slow, disbelieving steps. Then his pace quickens until he is at Persephone’s side. “No,” he manages to say, as he falls at her side and his voice shakes the floor. “<em> No</em>.”</p>
<p>Persephone can’t speak, but Eurydice can see, even from where she’s standing, the relief that enters her eyes when Hades grabs her hand and squeezes.</p>
<p>“I’m here,” Hades says, and the emotion in his voice is so unfamiliar that even Persephone, gasping for air, bleeding gold like the stuff they dig up in the mines, seems alarmed, and she reaches up and touches Hades’ chest, leaving a shining handprint there.</p>
<p>“Don’t go,” Hades says, pleading, as though he can somehow undo the damage that has been done by the machines he himself built.</p>
<p>But Persephone can’t stay. Hades hums a melody Eurydice knows she has heard before, and for the first time in Eurydice’s memory, Persephone is completely still. Not swaying with the weight of too many drinks. Not dancing to the rhythm of a song in her head. Her eyes slide shut like a flower closing in the absence of sunlight.</p>
<p>This is what Eurydice sees: a husband clinging to his wife, a god trying to deny what is undeniable, a lord of the Underworld who has just lost his queen to his own metal parts. Persephone won't come back; the gods may not succumb to old age or sickness, but once they die, there is no other side. </p>
<p>Hades' scream is pure agony. The sound brings the Underworld to its knees.</p>
<p>In the time that follows, the workloads increase. Without his voice of reason, Hades becomes even more cruel and irrational than before. Without Persephone bringing spring or even summer to the above, the train fills up faster, delivering souls upon souls upon souls. Eurydice sees that she was wrong about Hades. He did love Persephone the same way Orpheus loved Eurydice. And if the gods’ love once spun the world, it seems fitting that it would be the thing to bring the world down as well. Hell expands its borders, claiming more and more for its own, burying flowers under concrete and asphalt. There is no more hope and no more rest.</p>
<p>Eurydice swings her pickaxe. She operates machinery. She builds the wall. She works and works and works. At some point, she finds herself staring into the eyes of a young man with a bad haircut and a guitar.</p>
<p>“Eurydice?” he cries.</p>
<p>But she cannot remember who he is.</p>
<p> </p>
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